After twenty years of pain, she didn’t just get her legs back, she got her life back, and she’s running toward it. Jamie was born in 1995, a healthy, happy baby. Nothing hinted at what was coming. By age six, her knees ached constantly. She’d squat to “pop” them for a few seconds of relief. The pediatrician said her thigh bones looked rotated and assured her mom she would grow out of it. Years passed. The pain didn’t. Eventually, the same doctor admitted the only fix was a rare surgery that involved cutting the femurs, and that almost no one performed it. So Jamie kept hurting.
Her femurs were turned inward, so the joints didn’t line up. It felt like bone on bone in her hips and knees. She tried to be a normal kid; she played soccer, ran around with friends, then lay awake at night with throbbing joints. She decided pain wouldn’t get the last word in high school and joined cross-country. She wasn’t fast, but finishing races felt like winning a private battle. The cost was high: long stints in physical therapy, missed practices, tears in locker rooms as she weighed grit against agony. A coach once said it couldn’t be that bad. It was. By senior year, she quit running, not because she lacked heart, but because her body had nothing to give.
Her mom never stopped pushing for answers. At eighteen, Jamie finally saw an orthopedic surgeon who confirmed femoral anteversion. He wasn’t trained for the big corrective operation, but tried a minor hip procedure to ease the catching. It didn’t help. The pain intensified. Anxiety climbed. Some days she wished she didn’t have legs, then felt guilty for thinking it. Sitting hurts and standing hurts. Sleep hurt. Jamie dug into her research and found a specialist two hours away who did the “radical” femoral osteotomy. Her mom cheered her on, drove every trip, and turned each visit into a tiny adventure with roadside lunches and honest talks. After years of scans, therapy, and proof that exercise alone couldn’t fix bone alignment, Jamie was scheduled for surgery on her right femur in December 2016, four months before college graduation.
The operation was brutal. The femur is the body’s thickest bone, and the surgeon literally sawed it, rotated it, and fixed it in a new position. Jamie woke to pain she can’t describe, asking for her mom because sometimes you just need your mom. They spent three days in the hospital learning how to do everything again: socks, stairs, showers. The two-hour ride home was its own trial. Then came eight weeks of waiting for bone to knit, followed by relearning to walk. Her brain knew the steps; her muscles had to remember.
A year later the hardware came out. The left leg kept dragging her gait, and eventually she faced the second osteotomy. She postponed as long as she could, then went back in June. This time she knew what to expect. Eight weeks on, she could finally imagine a life where bones didn’t grind. She’s learning to walk for the third time, strengthening every day. It still hurts, but it’s a different kind of hurt, healing, not hopeless. Jamie is finishing a master’s in social work and interning at a rehab hospital, helping other bone and joint patients find their footing.
She still uses one crutch while her muscles relearn their jobs. She’s also training for a mini triathlon. It isn’t about speed; it’s about proof, the kind you can hang around your neck and show your mom while you say, we did this. She invites others to follow along and join the journey, starting wherever they are, because she knows what it is to start from the beginning. Through all of it, her mom stood steady, chauffeur, advocate, soft place to land. This victory belongs to both of them. Jamie once mourned a life she thought she’d never have. Now she’s walking toward it, step by step.
